Garapan, however, might have been a port city in the northeastern U.S.A., with its rectangular concrete wharf embracing freighters and fishing boats alike, the factory sprawl and towering black chimney of a sugar refinery, and row upon row of boxy houses in grid formation. As we neared the formidable jetty, other details filled in: a train pulling in along the pier, warehouses, telephone poles, streetlights. So much for leaving Western civilization behind.
The dinghy chugged into the harbor unnoticed; we pulled alongside the concrete pier, cut the motor, but did not tie up. Over at left, near a smaller, separate jetty, two flying boats floated near the refueling tanks and repair shed and ramps of a modest seaplane base. Down from us, at right, native workers in loose scruffy pants and usually no shirt and no shoes (like the rich boys on the
Someone in a real uniform had noticed us, however.
Muscular, spade-bearded, perhaps twenty-five, he wore a light-green denim shirt, open at the neck, with matching shorts and cap, and this uniform would not have been impressive at all, might even have seemed silly or childish, had that revolver in a black holster not been on his hip.
“Naval officer,” Johnson whispered.
Our one-man welcoming committee pointed a finger at us: Uncle Samurai Wants You. Well, at least it wasn’t his gun. He seemed unhappy. He told us so, in a spew of Japanese.
Johnson responded in Japanese; it sounded clumsy and halting, but our host considered the skipper’s words carefully, then called out and another denim-dressed officer trotted over, a chubby individual who received some instructions, and trotted off again.
Then our spade-bearded welcoming committee unsnapped his holster, and withdrew and pointed his long- barreled .38 revolver at us. The tarp between Hayden and me covered a similar gun. But there was no need to go for it; our host was just keeping us covered.
Behind him and his gun, beyond the warehouses and the train tracks, sat a typical jumbled waterfront—bars, cheap restaurants, small stores, wooden-frame buildings mostly, a few brick. Very few automobiles were in sight; people walked, or rode bicycles.
“How much of their lingo do you know?” I asked Johnson in a near whisper, as we bobbed in our boat.
“That one sentence,” he said. “It was a request that he bring an English-speaking official to meet an important visitor.”
Our host barked at us in Japanese; my psychic translation was: “Shut up!” I heeded my instinct.
We weren’t kept waiting long. When the chubby officer returned, I thought at first he’d summoned one of the men supervising the unloading of the train. Positioning himself before us, feet planted, hands clasped behind him, was a small, somber, rather skeletal-looking gray-mustached fellow in that white pith helmet, linen jacket and trousers getup.
But on closer look, there were differences: the linen jacket had epaulettes, the pith helmet bore a gold badge, and a revolver in a cavalry-style holster rode his belt—arranged for a fancy right to left cross-draw.
“Mikio Suzuki,” he said in a calm, medium-pitched voice. “Chief of Saipan Police. This is closed port.”
“Captain Irving Johnson of the civilian ship,
He appraised me and my black apparel and white collar with placid skepticism. “Chamorro missions need no new missionaries. Two priests already.”
Johnson said, “Please do us the courtesy of looking at Father O’Leary’s papers.”
I blessed him with a smile as I handed my passport and the two envelopes up. He examined the passport, then withdrew and unfolded each letter; he read them with no visible reaction.
Johnson and I traded tiny shrugs; Hayden had his eyes locked onto these men with guns looming on the pier, his hand draped casually between his legs, hovering over the tarp.
Then Chief Suzuki spoke to the spade-bearded officer, a guttural command that might have been my death sentence.
But within seconds, I’d been hoisted up and out of the dinghy, Hayden handing me my travel bag and a tight smile, while the Chief of Saipan Police carefully refolded my letters, inserted them in their envelopes and returned them to me, with a bow.
“Welcome to Garapan, Father O’Leary,” Chief Suzuki said.
I half-bowed to the chief, then nodded to the skipper and his first mate, who were already putt-putting away from the pier.
Father O’Leary was on his own in Saipan.
17
The main street of Garapan bisected the waterfront, whose typical seediness was quickly replaced by a wholesomely bustling downtown thoroughfare that, with minor changes, might have been small-town America. One-and two-story structures, sometimes wood-frame, sometimes brick, occasionally concrete, were shoulder to shoulder along the telephone-pole-flung asphalt street—office buildings, restaurants, a bakery, hairdressing salon, hardware store, fish market, the larger storefronts with awnings, smaller shops with modest wooden overhangs, even a picture show (although a samurai movie was playing). The apparel, too, seemed oddly Western—white shirts, white shorts, black shorts—though there was the occasional parasol-bearing housewife in a white cotton kimono, out grocery shopping.
A major difference—besides signs and hanging flags that bore the graceful hen scratchings of Japanese script —was how bicycles outnumbered automobiles. Another was a pervading, unpleasantly pungent odor of copra and dried fish, a near stench at odds with the neatness and cleanliness of Main Street Garapan, as were the occasional Chamorro men, dusky natives of the island, loitering at alleyways and along the wooden sidewalks, dirty and disheveled in their tattered clothes and unshod feet. It was as if the Japanese were a hurricane or tidal wave that had displaced them, and they hadn’t gotten around to tidying up yet.
